


Fatal Ascension

by matrixrefugee



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-20 07:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17618393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: The memories that pass through the mind of the Face of Boe during his last moments...





	Fatal Ascension

**Author's Note:**

> Written for < lj user="comment_fic">'s [Doctor Who, 10th Doctor, he does know who the Face of Boe is](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/272422.html?thread=52318502#t52318502). Featuring a cameo from a future Doctor.

"Who is it?" Martha Jones asked, staring down at the -- to her -- mysterious being which lay sprawled at their feet.

"No idea," the Doctor replied, but even he knew he had dodged the truth.

He knew who the Face of Boe had been. He had traveled with the wild and large living man this head had belonged to. He, the Doctor, had had a different face himself then, and in the company of yet another face, he had witnessed the moment when his one-time companion had taken a nigh literal bullet for him, from a gun in four parts meant to kill the Doctor, a shot meant to prevent him from regenerating. The compounds in the shot had contaminated Jack's DNA, making it hard for even his robust constitution to pull his substance back together. The Doctor -- the other, older face -- had reached in to give his friend one of his own regenerations. This only backfired and croggled Jack's protoplasm, compacting it into itself even as it tried again to reconstitute the form it once took...

When the smoke had thinned, there only remained a head, at least as tall as Jack's whole body, a web of fleshy tendrils extending from it, the remnants of the peripheral nervous system.

"No..." the younger Doctor had groaned. His older self had dropped to his knees, hands falling open and helpless.

_Doctor... I... am still here..._ a voice deep and thoughtful had spoken, audible only in the Doctors' minds.

They looked at each other, brown eyes to green, then looked back to the head before them.

"What?"

"What?!"

Then as one, "What..."

The lips of the face twitched in a smile. _We are linked somehow,_ the voice replied. _You have made me see things as you do... Past, present, future: all at once._

"Jack?" the younger Doctor had asked.

The large blue eyes crinkled at the corners as they had so many times before. _Yes. Those memories are still here._ the voice replied. _But... he is not._

And so it had ended. The Face had taken his leave fading away, disappearing into the fabric of the universe; likely his ever present vortex manipulator had fused to the rest of him, giving him the skill to move about as he chose. They had never seen each other again, though the older Doctor had tried to search for him. But he would hear of the Face of Boe, as the universe called this mysterious being, he would hear of the being's benevolence, of the acts of mercy wrought even though the strong hands that had once done them had faded. Beings across the universe started to tell legends of this creature, this face without a body, legends that the Doctor wanted to amend, but which he would not. Jack would want it this way, would have loved to hear the tales people told about this being. In a way, he knew, but in another way, he had passed on, freed of his cycle of death and reawakening.

And now he would go free for the last time...


End file.
